Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science. – Walter Jon Williams

Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, youve lost the whole thing. – W. S. Merwin

[P]oetry… folds its wings at the rough contact of reality… it feels in one sense much more, and in another much less, than the soul engaged with reality… – Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847)